oh my god do i try // nicholas/ask!

[Ridley Duchannes]

Her first, vaguely absurd thought was that maybe she'd had a little too much to drink.

But that didn't really make sense, because she'd barely been drinking - and even if she had been, Ridley was pretty damn good at holding her liquor. So as far as she could tell, there was no immediate explanation for why she was so groggy - why her vision blurred slightly as she opened her eyes, why her head throbbed as she lifted it and tried to get a good look at wherever she'd ended up. Her surroundings were most definitely unfamiliar, and that was the first thing she registered. This wasn't the TARDIS. And it wasn't the club she'd snuck off to, either. Seeing as being a Doctor's companion was sort of...a full-time job, it was rare that she ever really got any alone time, so when she'd gotten the chance, she'd taken it - though admittedly, only Ridley would call hanging out at a club, having a drink or two, and dancing with a few strangers 'alone time'. But it'd been fun. Up until...well. She still wasn't really sure what had happened.

Narrowing her golden-yellow eyes, she struggled to remember. She'd headed out into the parking lot (her black and white Mini Cooper was something else she needed to spend more time with - time machines were great and all, but nothing quite beat the thrill of racing down an empty road in an open convertible, feeling the wind in your hair as you went ten miles over the speed limit), and then...nothing. What had happened after that?

Somehow, she'd ended up in this...dump. The most accurate thing Ridley could compare it to was one of those police interrogation cells, like the kind you saw on television - plain, gray walls, a dull light, and a relatively empty room save for a table and a couple of chairs - one of which she was now handcuffed to. She collected herself enough to pull sharply at her restraints, but didn't succeed in doing much more than irritating the skin of her wrists. A slight snarl slipped out as she scowled around the empty room in search of the culprit - or culprits. Whoever they were, whatever they wanted, they had made a serious mistake in screwing with her. If one of these lousy bastards would just show their faces, she could just convince them to let her go - and then maybe throw themselves off a cliff as an afterthought. Or, alternatively, the right Cast could break her free of these restraints, at least. But she was finding it...difficult to concentrate. To tap into her abilities required a certain amount of focused, and right now it was hard to even get her head to stop pounding.

Right. Well. Drawing a deep breath, Ridley tried to keep her temper in check. Whatever they'd used on her, it would have to wear off eventually...especially since if they didn't know what she was, they'd probably only used what would pass as enough to drug a human. And failing that...the Doctor would find her eventually. He was good at that kind of thing. Failing that, well...Lena could always drag the whole damn family down here in the destructive force of nature that was the Duchannes clan - but the fact that she would actually have to deal with her mother afterwards was almost enough to make Ridley want to stay put.

Whatever. She'd find a way out of this, once her head cleared a little - and in the mean time, whoever was behind this had some serious explaining to do. She leaned back in her chair and forced a smirk. "You gonna leave me here all night?" Ridley called out to...whoever might have been listening. The least they could do was show their faces. It was time to have a little chat.

[nicholas]

It was a rare thing to get exactly what one asked for, and despite having spent nearly his entire life living by that principle alone, Nicholas could not help but find a certain irony in his current situation or the set of events leading up to it, something about it all that tickled his darker sense of humor. Ever since being brought out of cryo storage on board the wreck that was what had remained of the functional UNSC Basilisk, a once fearsome ship of the line turned into little more than a barely working shell of its former self, his only goal had been the completion of his task - to ensure that the vessel and all aboard it reached Earth intact. Something that he'd managed to do in no small part through the effort of the clearly rampant Section I AI onboard, as well as the ship's complement of ODSTs - a seemingly impossible task given what they had, but the punchline of it all hadn't hit them until they'd arrived at their destination. It had been Earth, yes - nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, same oceans, same landmasses, same planet, but it was not the planet that they had known. Where he and the others onboard the ship had been expecting a city covered planet marred by over population, pollution and hundreds of other scars and problems inflicted upon it by the world's natural inhabitants, what they'd found instead was Earth as it had supposedly been back during the early twenty first century.

Needless to say, contact had been tricky. Given that neither he or anyone else had any idea what was going on at the time (for that matter, he still didn't quite understand how it had happened), they were quick to claim affiliation with the United Nations once the planet below had taken note of them - and surprisingly enough, that had worked. As they had noticed from orbit, it was not the Earth that they had known, but something radically different. Despite being centuries before it should have happened, the United Nations had apparently already commissioned an armed force of their own, years before anything like it should have existed, and it had been under their jurisdiction that the Basilisk had been secured, nonessential personnel brought down via space shuttle and the vessel repaired under their watch to the point where it could withstand atmospheric reentry to be held at one of their facilities. With the ship and all of the technology and information aboard it seized and Balmung placed in an isolated system where the insane AI could do no harm, the UN sanctioned group, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce as it was called, had begun debriefing everyone, from him to the ODSTs and scientists slowly being brought out of cryo. After a while of hearing the same story over and over again, always the same, always identical and matching up perfectly with the various crew logs within the destroyer's computers and the personal logs found on many of the private datapads in the crew quarters, the continued debriefings merely turned into more of a formality, and having been held in custody for over two months, UNIT had begun integrating them into their own ranks.

While it was all well and good for the scientists and civilians, many of which were assigned to repairing the Basilisk's much abused hull and internal systems or more or less right back to their own personal projects from their time in the UNSC, mostly finalizing or continuing their work from before on weapons, armor or other prototype technologies, there wasn't much for soldiers like him or the ODSTs to do. While the planet had come under attack before, it wasn't anything nearly on the level of what the Covenant would have mustered, and they had largely been repulsed in one way or another - in any case, there was no immediate need for their skills or services, not when UNIT's own forces were competent enough to handle their own issues. As a direct result of that, he and the others had been held in UNIT custody for much longer for a total of nearly half a year until they had finally deemed their skills worthy of notice and them worthy of trust, or at least enough to put them to work. Not exactly one to hold grudges, especially not in circumstances like these despite the fact that they were still keeping his badly damaged MJOLNIR in their possession when repairs should have been made during the first few weeks, all Nicholas had requested when he'd started was to have the ODSTs reassigned to the same taskforce that he had been, and after the first few resounding successes with their assignments he'd been "promoted" to lead the group. Whether or not that was due to the difficulties that the previous UNIT commander had encountered in dealing with the notoriously brutal and short tempered special ops veterans or whether it was based on merit alone was entirely up to debate, but Nicholas was merely glad that he had served with them before - traditionally speaking, Spartans and ODSTs did not get along, and had he not fought alongside them on Reach and afterwards he doubted they would have even considered listening to him.

In any case, much of the work they were doing was little more than glorified MP duty, and often even less than that. Simple police work more than anything else, although the fact that most of their assignments turned out to be dead ends was forcing Nicholas to again reassess the validity of their jobs - by now Nick was beginning to feel that he and his people had just been swept under the rug, placed where they couldn't do any harm but would be busy enough to feel that they were doing something, and after so many years spent dealing with the political bullshit that had run rampant within ONI's own bureaucracy to recognize what was going on. With any luck, though, the current assignment was a sign of change to come - after being ordered to track down some teenager out of South Carolina and to bring her in for questioning regarding several events and family members in her home town, things finally seemed to be turning around. It wasn't often that you found someone capable of convincing and ODST to change their minds, and Nicholas had never heard of one disobeying a direct order without damned good reason, nevermind more than one at once. He had no idea what it was she had done - and it had been her, as his knocking her unconscious with a blow to the back of the head had brought them all back to their senses - but it had been anything but normal, and given UNIT's supposed purpose and many of the older case files he'd been given access to, he wasn't ruling out anything yet.

Quickly striding down the hall and dressed in simple fatigues, the only clothing he felt at all comfortable in besides being encased in the full half ton shell of MJOLNIR still in UNIT's possession, Nicholas closed in on the door that led into the room that the Duchannes woman was being held in, and ODST standing to either side of the steel portal, helmets off but otherwise in full gear - not that it mattered given what had happened when they had taken Duchannes into custody, but he could understand the comfort that came with being suited up and having easy access to a firearm. Maybe not really a healthy thing in retrospect, but given what they'd all been through and the events that had shaped them and their lives, perfectly understandable.

"Corporals." Nicholas said, pausing in front of the door long enough for one to step slightly to the side and far enough for Nicholas to open the door himself and step into the room, the other soldier closing and locking it behind him. Quickly scanning the room over, Nicholas wasn't all that surprised to see the woman awake already, and clearly more than unhappy with her accommodations. Well, tough - they'd asked nicely the first time, and as he remained by the door, silent and out of her line of sight, the Spartan took several long moments to size her up, taking particular note of her rather unusual eye color.

".... I'm not entirely sure what you did back in that parking lot, but it was the first time I'd seen anyone pull that off with someone from the 105th, nevermind three of them. The CO's themselves usually have a hard time controlling them to begin with, and if I didn't know better I'd say you'd drugged them." Nicholas said calmly, remaining where he was. Until he knew exactly what she had done, he wasn't taking any chances, and he was confident enough with his standing orders he'd given to his people after the first time - if she tried it again, knock her unconscious like he had the first time.

[Ridley Duchannes]

Here we go. The moment she heard the door open and then close again, Ridley stiffened and went still - listening silently for sound of approaching footsteps. None followed, however - it seemed her visitor was smart enough not to get too close right away, and although she twisted slightly to try and see him better, she couldn't make out too much of him at this angle. How mysterious. She bit back a snarky comment - at the moment, she was more interested in figuring out what was going on and having a few things explained to her than she was in taunting him. That would wait until either things got worse, or, well...just plain boring. Which was very much a possibility, if this encounter lived up to her expectations and turned into some kind of lecture on...whatever it was they'd brought her in for. So, leaning back in her chair, she waited for him to address her.

She didn't need to wait long. Her eyebrows lifted dubiously at his words - the parking lot. What had happened in the parking lot? His statement prompted the memory - there'd been men, geared up in some...very unusual uniforms, and they'd...she'd fought them. They'd wanted to take her in, and without stopping to ask questions, Ridley had merely worked her way right into their heads and convinced them to momentarily for get who she was and why they needed her. They certainly weren't the sort of people she was familiar with, and instead of taking her leave then and there, she'd been about to proceed into forcing them to tell her who they were and what they wanted in detail - and that was when everything had gone black. They'd...no, maybe they hadn't drugged her up...had one of them slammed her in the back of the head? She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, wincing a little. It certainly would have explained the splitting headache.

And this was just peachy - what she'd done had not been lost on this man, apparently, and now she was going to have to endure an interrogation on the subject. It told her one thing, though: whoever these people were, they hadn't expected her to be capable of such extensive mental persuasion. So there was a very good chance that they didn't know what she was - or not exactly, anyway. The fact that they'd been after her in the first place suggested they at least suspected her of something. Ridley wasn't about to go spilling all of her family's secrets, certainly not to a bunch of nosy Mortals, but...right now, she wasn't exactly in a position where she could just get away with saying nothing. So in response to the stranger's mention of drugging his men, she let out a brief laugh. "Drugs. Man, I guess that's one way to put it." Ridley remarked dryly, still unable to keep from fidgeting and instinctively pulling against the cuffs a little. "My own special brand of drugs."

Right. He probably wasn't going to consider that a satisfactory explanation, but Ridley didn't bother elaborating right then - it'd be more fun this way. She smirked lightly and fell silent for a moment, still trying to clear her head. Damn, she was out of it - these guys didn't play around. Not that it was going to stop her from doing so. She craned her neck again, still trying to get a better look at him. "Seriously, though, it was nothing personal. But they were kind of in my way. Speaking of which - mind telling me exactly what you crazies want with me?" She kept her tone relatively light, almost playful - losing her temper and allowing her irritation to show wasn't going to get her anywhere fast. "I mean, I'm flattered that you've taken such an interest, and all, but...I'm really not a big fan of people who waste my time." And that, undoubtedly, was exactly what was happening here. This really wasn't how she'd been picturing spending her evening.

[nicholas]

Coy, wasn't she? Well, he could work with that. It was better than her being actively hostile, although not too far off - at this point it could really go either way, and had Nicholas not spent a fair amount of time working within ONI as part of the Intelligence community himself, he would have admitted outright, then and there, that he probably wouldn't have been qualified to speak with her at that moment. He'd done his homework, though, and while he still didn't completely believe in half of the things that UNIT supposedly dealt with that was native to Earth, he wasn't going to simply discredit what he was told without seeing proof that what he was being told was in fact false. He'd consulted a number of other people within the organization connected to some of the more outlandish case files he'd read to have them review what had happened on his assignment thus far, most notably what had occurred in that parking lot, and taken their opinions and advice into account - and for once he was somewhat thankful that he was no embedded within the UNSC's rank and file, as much of what he was probably going to say next likely would have earned him and express pass to a psych evaluation.

"The operative words there were 'if I didn't know better'. Aside from giving them the initial benefit of the doubt given that I've worked with all of those soldiers before and the fact that all of the tox and drug screens showed up clean after we got back, I doubt you know how impressive a feat it'd be to introduce anything into their systems to begin with. Whatever you did back there, it didn't involve chemicals or simple words." Nicholas said, remaining by the door, out of the woman's sight and beyond her reach. If what his UNIT comrades seemed to think she was capable of was true, the last thing he wanted to do was get close to her or make eye contact, at least until her knew exactly what she did and how she did it. If anything, though, he was admittedly intrigued by it - again, if it was true. An old remnant of his Intelligence training, where he'd been taught to view anyone and everyone as a potential asset for whatever goal he might have been trying to achieve - tools to be used and, if necessary, maintained, varying in usefulness and utility from that of a completely disposable individual, someone that simple made things easier but was by no means particularly important in the long run to something that varied more along the lines of employment, something based on more than the simple fear used to keep most such contacts in line. Long story short, she could hypothetically make his life much, much easier, and make the goals he'd intended to work towards over the course of the next several years attainable within only a few months, if he was careful - the ODSTs he worked with were excellent soldiers, but they were not the solution to any problems that required a finer touch.

"I'm going to be blunt with you. This is not a police station, nor is it affiliated with any branch of the United States government. There is no due process here, largely in part because I doubt half of the things that my colleagues deal with will ever see the light of day, at least any time soon." Nicholas continued, carefully watching the woman as he spoke for any sign of reaction. As upset and abrasive as she might have been, she was also plenty smart, judging from what records UNIT had been able to dig up from the public systems. She'd understand exactly what the words he was saying would mean - no one would be coming for her here, at least not any time soon, and right then and there he was the only person she had to talk to, either to bargain with or make demands of, both things he could use to begin negotiations.

"I'm reasonable, and that's also probably the reason I'm having difficulty believing what I've been told by my superiors, or at least until I saw what you did with my people. They're all seasoned veterans with years of special operations experience, and no normal human could have simply told them to back off and gotten results with words alone, and that lends a certain degree of believability to the claim that you're not what you appear to be. I'm just going to offer once to let you clear things up, or to explain in full what you did. What happens from there on depends on what I'm told, but know that if you lie to me, there will be no second chances."

[Ridley Duchannes]

It was still difficult to discern exactly how much he already knew about her. Evidently he didn't know all the dirty details - he would have known better then to allow his men to approach her the way they had if he did - but...what all did he know? How much would it be wise to tell him? It was impossible to say what she would or wouldn't be able to get away with lying with when she had no idea how much he already knew. But betraying her family's secret - no, more than that, betraying her species' secret to a bunch of Mortals was not something Ridley had any desire to do. Not by a long shot. Whether these people were associated with the American government or not, there was no telling what they might do with proof that the Caster world existed. It was true, she could be...infamously unpredictable where her ever-shifting loyalties were concerned. But one thing she would not do was endanger the lives of her family - or at the very least, make things more difficult for them. Macon would no doubt find a way to repel anyone looking to stick their noses where they shouldn't, and Delphine would see any threat coming miles away...but still.

Silence wasn't really an option here, though. It was true, she could always try to wait this out - once she recovered, they were going to have difficult keeping hold of her; a fully awake and aware Caster (let alone one with mind controlling abilities) was...a difficult being to contain anywhere for long. But these people weren't idiots. She might have a small window in which she'd be fully aware enough again to use her abilities without them realizing it, but more than likely they'd jump straight to drugging her up again - or hitting her over the head, whatever. No...the best route here was probably to keep him talking, stall, maybe distract him. What she needed, though, was time. Even if these people had done their homework, she doubted they knew the full extent of all the resources she had available to her - all the connections she'd made, inside and out of the Caster world. Sooner or later, they'd track her down.

She just hoped it was sooner rather than later.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure your boys are well-trained. Do exactly as they're told." she remarked, a bit bitingly - she was still no less than thoroughly irritated with her situation. If he would at least step out where she could see him, she might feel a little less inclined to be so defensive, but...it wasn't likely that he would do so any time soon, and her hackles were good and raised at the disadvantage. Still, Ridley shrugged. What she'd done to his men really hadn't been of any consequence to her - at least it wouldn't have been if she hadn't gotten caught - and she needed to give him enough information to keep him interested without seeming as if she cared too much what she was telling him. "But if I told you I was a witch...how would you feel about that?" She wasn't going to drop the word 'Caster' around him right now - she didn't want to give him a lead he could use to find anyone else, and 'witch' wasn't technically a lie... "Or a Siren, if you want. The kind that can get right into people's heads and make them do things. There isn't really any 'asking' involved." There were probably more questions coming - but Ridley wasn't going to explain more than she needed to without being prompted. Bought her more time, anyway. "I was nice, you know. Coulda made 'em turn on each other instead." She was almost starting to wish she had.

Ridley fell silent for a moment then, leaning back in her chair and lifting her gaze to the ceiling instead of continuing to strain to see the man questioning her. "How'd you even know to come after me in the first place? Those are some pret-ty impressive resources for people who aren't affiliated with the American government." And that was fishy, though she'd initially let it slide by without question - just who were these people?

[nicholas]

Well.......... that was simple. Too simple, and had it not been more or less exactly in line with what the people he had asked for advisement had told him, he would have dismissed it out of hand, had her put under again and shipped off to whatever hole UNIT kept transhumans in, or anything that didn't even come that close. He could tell pretty easily that she was still holding something back - given how she'd attempted to resist being taken into custody he knew she wasn't going to give him answers beyond what served her immediate interests, at least not immediately - but at this point he really didn't care. He wasn't after whoever she was protecting or whatever it was she was hiding - his job description didn't cover going after more than he'd been assigned to track down, and given that no one was doing him any favors he saw no reason to return them himself. That being said, though.... regulations covering how he dealt with who and what he caught were fairly loose, probably had been ever since the seventies when UNIT's operational history had taken a sudden turn for the better. He could either lock her up, cut her loose, or if she was amenable.... find another, more productive method of dealing with her. Finally starting to move away from the door, his footsteps silent, Nicholas walked further into the room, passing behind her.

"To be honest I wouldn't know what to think, but given the stunt you pulled when we took you into custody it was apparently one of the first guesses my superiors had." Nicholas replied, continuing on around the table and finally coming into her line of sight, only the lower reaches of his chest downward visible in the dim lighting, the rest of his seven and a half foot frame hidden in the room's darkness as he stopped and turned to face her. While the easiest and simplest solution would probably be just to hand her off to the next person up the chain of command, an action that would in all likelyhood keep her trapped within processing for another couple of months at the least, assuming they didn't take the option to lock her up, ideas were already forming in his own head. He knew what was out there, what the human race - and by now every other species that called Earth home - would face if they didn't start preparing for it. The last time had ended in the complete extinction of the human race, and by extension the annihilation of every world that they'd inhabited - the planets' surfaces reduced to little more than boiling rock and oceans, the very air itself burning, although whether the Covenant had done it purely out of spite or just to ensure a job well done, he couldn't even begin to guess. UNIT, however, was content to continue on as they had - either because they believed themselves prepared already, or because they simply didn't put any stock in what he and every other crewmember from the ship they'd arrived on had testified to. This..... Siren, witch, whatever she was, though, offered new possibilities, paths that had previously been closed to him before.

"Bluntly put, we're not so much affiliated with them as they are with us. Assuming you've kept up with the news, I'm assuming you've aware of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. We haven't exactly made any real efforts to keep ourselves hidden, and the last few years have seen a recent.... rise in our activities." Nicholas continued, carefully watching her face for any reaction - either to the words he was saying, or for any indication that her body was starting to recover from the blow to the head he'd inflicted on her. He wanted her lucid, but not to the point where she could attempt to escape - he was more than ready to put her out again should she give the slightest sign that she was even thinking about making a run for it. Powerful as her mental abilities were, he was still reasonably certain that he was faster - to a point, anyways. Better to be safe than sorry, in any case.

"I don't know what it is you're hiding or protecting - you wouldn't have given me a truthful answer so readily otherwise - but I don't particularly care. I'm given rather broad leeway as to how I'm to deal with you, but to be honest I know an opportunity when I see one. What would you say if I were to offer you something along the lines of a.... beneficial partnership, something that would end well for both of us?"